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Tuesday, 28 August 2012

I'm not sure where the time has gone since my last post. I promised some more of the photos from the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham, UK. As I have explained before I have misplaced my catalogue so can't give you the names of who made the quilts but I can give the number and title. If anyone can supply the names I will add them to the post. The quilts are lovely to look at.Quilt number 138 was titled 'Lichen' and made by Janine Visser from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In her email to me she said she wasn't sure whether to be flattered or annoyed that there were photos of her work on blogs. I think that you will all agree she should definitely be flattered. The piece is beautifully designed and made and deserves all the interest and praise that it has received.

I loved the detail in this quilt.

Quilt number 156 by Janet Appelby is called 'Vikings Beware'.

Detail of the machine stitched thistle head.

I'm not very keen on snakes so quilt number 169 'Snake Goddess' had me squirming. You really got the effect of the snakes twisting and turning.

Quilt number158 'Fit for a King' had beautiful blackwork embroidery.

A close up of a couple of the blocks.

Quilt number 159 'Tree of Life'.

Quilt number 166 is called 'Hyde Park 1973'. I wonder if this is based on interesting memories of the music in the park in 1973?

Most of the photos to date have been of the art quilts. This one number 358 'Midnight Magnolias' is a traditional quilt. I love the fabrics used in this one.

Another traditional quilt 'Firenze Memories' number 378

Quilt 376 is called 'A touch of Welsh'. I have included a photo to show some quilting detail.

And one final quilt number 377 'Birds in the Forest'.

with a close up of the centre detail. The birds were beautiful.

I still have some more photos to share and I will do that soon but now I need to get back to my sewing machine and my current project as I am longing to get it finished. It's a mini quilt swap and I will share this with you very soon. I'm currently working on two quilt swaps but the second one is staying under wraps until it's completed. The one I'm working on at the moment includes embroidery.

Thursday, 23 August 2012

In the last post about the festival of quilts I showed some photos of quilts from the 'gift of quilts' project. If you would like to know more about this project which aimed to make a gift of a quilt to each participating country at the Olympics and Para-Olympics in London 2012 click here and the link will take you to the website.There is also information on this website about the Special Olympics which takes place the year before the main Olympics. This is not the first time that quilts have been given at the Olympics but it is the first time that they have been given at the Para-Olympics. As well as this project there was also Quilts4London which made pennants for each of the participants at the event. An amazing achievement. The link will take you to the website to view some of the completed pennants. These were made by quilting groups, sewing groups, individuals, brownie and Guide units, in fact by anyone who wanted to join in.Unfortunately I have misplaced my catalogue so I can't give you the names of the people who made the quilts but I will give you the numbers and the titles as I took photos of the tickets by the quilts. If anyone viewing this has a catalogue can you leave me a comment with the names. Unfortunately the first two photos I don't have the numbers for. I think I went into a 'child in the sweetie shop' moment and got so excited I forgot what I was doing.

The next quilt no 59 by Kate Crossley is titled Kahr-Tog-Ruh-Fee. As you can see this is a really clever quilt map.

Still on the map theme quilt no 63 by Alicia Merrett is titled Canal Country.

No 64 Monsteriosity took me back to the late 60's and the 70's when Swiss Cheese plants were so popular. I loved how the leaves filled the space of the quilt.

Detail from the quilt showing the leaves going over the border just as the leaves of the plant took over all the space wherever you put them. This is a very striking quilt.

No 80 is Rhythm & blues. I love the guitar fabric and the overall quilt..

The next quilt no 75 Connection, had people standing and staring at it for some time. My husband loved this quilt but he and another man viewing it at the same time thought a better title would have been disconnection.

No 111 'In Russet mantle clad' had very striking colours in it.

As soon as I saw this quilt I thought of my trip to Morocco many years ago so it was no surprise to find that quilt no 105 by Janet McCallum was titled 'Moroccan inspirations'.

This quilt no 116 by Kathryn Chambers called Mandala is beautiful but I could not get the photo in focus. Even fuzzy it is a great quilt.

The final photo for today is of quilt 99 'Up in Smoke'. You can almost feel the trees burning and smell the smoke.

I really enjoyed my visit to the festival as the atmosphere was great and the visitors very friendly, wanting to chat and swap views on the quilts on display and their own projects. The quilts as the stars of the show were breath-taking.

There has been some progress this week on my scrappy quilt I am making for my daughter Lucy. This quilt is using some of the good pieces of an older patchwork quilt and combining it with new quilt blocks. All the blocks are 12inches and I am quilting as I go. This week I spent some time making some stamp collection blocks. I use the fusible method for this and they are easy and fun to make. I managed to get three made this week. The squares are one and a half inches to cut out and this is what takes the time. The squares have to be accurately cut for the method to work.

The tedious bit of these blocks is pressing the seams The one block is almost pressed but the other is only half done. The squares are all placed randomly. I need to get this quilt finished as Lucy wants to take it back to university with her and she starts back at the end of September. However I do find a fixed deadline helps me be more focused on a project.I also started the scroll work on my millennium sampler.

I have also finished all but one of the borders between the individual pictures and added some more individual stitches across the sampler. All in all a good week of moving forward on my big projects.As promised part 3 of the Festival of Quilts photos will be posted later today or tomorrow morning.

The final block of the tetris QAL run by Melissa over at Happy quilting. For once I have completed this quickly. Every other week I have completed my block just before the next weeks pieces come out. It's been fun to do and it has used up some of the scraps (but not many.)

Next the borders and the finishing and then this quilt will go to Project Linus. In our area many of the Linus quilts are going to a women's refuge. The quilts are greatly appreciated as the women and their children, for a variety of reasons end of having to leave their home and all their belongings.I will be showing the completed quilt very soon.

Monday, 20 August 2012

I really enjoyed my day at the Festival of quilts in Birmingham. Everyone was so friendly and there was a lot of chatting about the quilts and about quilting. The visitors were mainly women but there was a handful of men. Some of the men were quilters but most, like my husband had gone along with their wives or girlfriends. Many were sporting cameras and their job was to take the photos whilst their partners enjoyed the quilts. Quite a few people were there on trips with their quilting or sewing group.Anyway here are some more photos. I apologise that I am not able to say who made the quilts having misplaced my catalogue but I will give you the competitor number and the quilt title and if anyone has the information I can add the names later.This is a handmade bed of olive ash. The headboard quilt is double sided and as well as the bed quilt there is also a hidden valance all entitled 'Forest of Dreams' by Melinda Schwakhofer. It was amazing and many people stopped to admire it and read the information about it. Unfortunately the lighting by it wasn't brilliant so getting a good photo proved difficult.

No 848 was from Sweden and also attracted a lot of comments. the display was very colourful and had delightful designs on them.

The next three quilts were stash quilts. This one is by Anni Strumann whose partner was Jill Packer.

The wishing tree by Lucy Poland whose partner was unknown was also very popular. Unfortunately I managed to cut the top and bottom off the quilt.

As a Brownie Guide leader I was pleased to see this quilt by 1st Aldbourne Brownies in Wiltshire. I bet they had fun making it.

My husband liked this quilt. It is one of the the quilts inspired by the cultural Olympiad. The project 'a gift of quilts' whose patron is Kaffe Fassett gave one quilt to each participating country in the 2012 Olympics. 7 of these quilts were on display.

Detail from another of the quilts.

The flowers on this quilt received a lot of praise from visitors.

Detail from the same quilt.

Unfortunately I need to finish my post now as it is getting rather late. So part 3 will follow tomorrow.

I am taking part in a tetris block quilt along over at Happy Quilting. The button for the quilt along is on the right of the blog. I have been rather slow at getting this weeks block sorted out. I only looked at the pieces this morning but I've managed to get week 5 completed.

The final block is this week. The blocks look really good together and will make a great Linus quilt.I will be posting some more pictures of the quilts on display at the Festival of Quilts 2012 at the NEC Birmingham UK later this evening.

Sunday, 19 August 2012

On Friday John and I drove to the NEC in Birmingham for this years Festival of Quilts. I haven't been to this event before due to clashes of dates with other activities I do, so I was unsure exactly what to expect. Getting there was easy as it's just outside London, we got onto the M40 and it is motorway to just a couple of miles short of the venue.Once there it was a case of getting coffee and deciding how to get the most out of the day. The number of quilts was staggering and of course there was shopping to be done, with fabrics, machines and loads of accessories on display.I took a large number of photos and carefully made sure I took a photo of the exhibitor number and title of the quilt so I could match the number up with the name in the catalogue. Unfortunately I have managed to lose my catalogue but I can at least give you the quilt title.

This is 'Albert the Foundry Man' by Rose Stanley part of the It Happens - Heavy Metal exhibition.

Also part of this exhibition is 'Honouring Tyneside' by Chris Dixon.

This is Kupala Night (Feast of St John the Baptist) by Alexandra Nikulina from Russia.

Another Russian quilt titled Sun-turn (Kolovorot) by the Loskutnye Zabavy Patchwork Studio led by A Nikulina.

and a final quilt from Russia titled 'A town by the sea' by Alexandra Nikulina.

This is called Turkish delight and was made in 2008.

There was a big section of quilts made by school textile groups. This one 'Diamonds' won third prize for the secondary schools. I haven't got a photo of the winning quilt in this group as I couldn't get near enough to take a picture. I actually preferred this to the winning entry.

This quilt won 3rd prize for the Young Quilter / Embroiderer 5 to 8 years.

and this was the 2nd prize winner in the same age group.

There were some amazing art quilts by textile artists from Latvia but unfortunately they did not allow photography. Have a look at the work of Elina Lusis-Grinberga and Aina Muze.this is just a small selection of the quilts. more to follow tomorrow. Happy quilting!